Celia, Celia
by Scandalacious Intentions
Summary: Perhaps Tonks isn't every man's fantasy, but she's his. She's lying beside him, the sheer bulk of her bump producing a small groan as she shifts her weight, and Remus Lupin can't quite believe his luck.


**Disclaimer: I own nothing here - except Remus Lupin who I have kidnapped and hope will develop acute Stockholm Syndrome by Friday.**

**A/N: Just a friendly warning that this is a high T.**

**This is, I guess, the companion piece to 'Handyman' which went up exactly a year ago. You needn't have read it. I've written one now for both Remus and Teddy. This character-study-series needs a bit of Dora loving.**

**This, incidentally, should have been what went up for Valentine's Day. I think "Sexy Scrabble" is going to have to be written at some point too.**

**Last thing for a little while now, I think. March is fast approaching and that means end of term assignments.**

"_When I am said and weary  
__When I think all hope has gone  
__When I walk along High Holburn  
__I think of you with nothing on."_

"_Celia, Celia" - Adrian Mitchell._

She was the last person Remus Lupin imagined himself marrying - not that he often so much as dared imagine the sort of woman who might be coerced into a marriage to him. She was young and beautiful with an infectious laugh and sharp wit. She never believed him, but her piercing silver eyes were captivating. As were her full, almost round lips, the thought of which had a tendency to distract him.

His wife, the mother of his child, was not supposed to wear leather trousers or t-shirts bearing the logo of _The Weird Sisters_. She wasn't supposed to have pink hair. He's not entirely sure how he imagined Mrs. Lupin, but she was certainly not supposed to be Nymphadora Tonks, who was the sort of person that, before he met her, he might cross the street in fear of.

She wore enough black eyeliner to keep the kohl industry booming. Each short nail was painted a different colour. When her hair was purple, so were her lips. She was pierced in so many places that he refused to stand next her when there was the smallest chance of lightening. Her skirts were alarmingly short and she seemed to have a policy of never speaking when her middle finger could say it all.

Tonks drank a lot of apple flavoured vodka. He had rarely seen so much alcohol consumed as when his wife decided she and her oldest friend were going to "tear shit up" and he'd spent his teenage years with Sirius Black, who spoke of liquor brands as though they were close personal friends of his.

Lupin had always imagined himself as utterly useless in a domestic environment and when Tonks decided she was going to marry him, he wasn't entirely sure what he could possibly bring to the table. He had little money, no prospects, and an inferiority complex. So he was glad to find that she couldn't cook. He bought himself an apron and took up baking. They would live on rock cakes if necessary. Occasionally he wondered what his son would think, but he tried not to dwell on it.

The Mrs. Lupin he'd imagined was supposed to be able to produce loaded plates for four hungry boys at a moment's notice, just as his mother had done. She was supposed to wear sweetheart necklines and pin her hair up. He couldn't help but think that Tonks was a little too, well, too sexy to be anyone's mother. She wore fishnets and lace. She said things that would make a sailor blush.

Endearingly, she seemed completely oblivious to the power she held over him. She padded around their home barefoot in the mornings, reaching into kitchen cabinets dressed in a tiny pair of aqua pyjama shorts without a thought for how fast it made his heart beat. Even in public, she hummed short passages of music they had made love to, without noticing the guilty pink hue of his cheeks. In some ways, he felt that she could be very naïve.

And in others, naïve would be the last word he chose in connection with Tonks. When she took him to bed, she looked him in the eyes. She knew exactly where to touch him - even the obscure places that other men might not find pleasurable. She whispered filth in his ear, knowing exactly the effect it would have on him. Some words he didn't even know.

She had certainly widened his vocabulary. 'Sexy Scrabble' was introduced the night that his son was conceived and after the effect on their relationship, she hadn't wanted to challenge him again. He thought it was probably just as well. Tonks had won with triple-word-scores for 'Foreplay' and adding 'Me' to the end of his four letter words, while he seemed to have an awful lot of 'E' tiles and the only word he could think of was 'Eerie' which didn't quite fit the tone of the evening.

And yet, she could be charming and demure when it suited her. She was bubbly and cackled when she laughed like the witches in fairy tales his mother had told him at bedtime. She chewed brightly coloured gum and blew bubbles with it. She oughtn't to be the sort of woman he would feel comfortable taking home to meet his mother, and yet he had the distinct impression that his mother would strongly approve.

In many ways, his wife reminded him of his mother. It alarmed him more than he cared to admit. Sometimes, it was genuinely frightening.

"Remus, can you put that down and actually talk to me?"

"Remus, don't make that face at me. What do you mean 'What face?' _That_ face."

"Remus, can you turn that stuff you call music down please? Thank you."

Of course, _her_ music, "real" music, was allowed to blare all around the house. It mostly consisted of a lot of screaming men who seemed to be very angry and grew beards longer than their arms.

He thought she needed educating on the subject of musical taste and, though she refused to listen to Glenn Miller, she seemed to have enjoyed the afternoon spent in a pawn shop while he pretended his income would stretch to the piano in the window. Her jaw had dropped when he had played for almost fifteen minutes straight from memory. She'd discovered a love for classical piano and so, though he had been disheartened by his poor fingering, he considered it a modest success.

He had never imagined loving a woman who was impulsive and wild. Everything about Nymphadora Tonks ought to have repelled him, but he was drawn to the havoc she caused.

For weeks Lupin had dismissed her as insincere. She had sat at Order meetings, laughing, not yet knowing the grief she would feel as they were picked off one by one, like a child who wanted to play at war. And then she'd casually hospitalised Dolohov with a flick of her wand. She was Moody's protégé for a reason. Her balance was somewhat precarious, but her hand-to-eye co-ordination was second to none. She was a truly brilliant potioner who could almost out-duel him despite being thirteen years his junior.

It was the little things that endeared her to him. She was sincere when it mattered; when she told him she loved him, when she accepted him without question in the same way she was willing to accept everyone. What he had originally diagnosed as an attitude problem turned out to be just as many insecurities as he harboured. She was simply better at hiding hers behind offensive pin-badges on her lapels and spiked purple hair. She looked disturbingly sexy in his patched cardigans. She ate around the icing of cakes and licked it off her fingers. She kept a small stash of chick-lit hidden in a box labeled 'Paperwork' under the bed. She teamed a purple skirt with yellow Dr. Martens seemingly oblivious to the violent clash.

Perhaps she wasn't every man's fantasy, but she was his. As she slept beside him, the sheer bulk of her bump producing a small groan as she shifted her weight, he couldn't quite believe his luck.


End file.
